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The musical was To rent and he’s celebrating his silver anniversary this year with an online gala and a lot of gratitude from generations of fans.
Jonathan Larson’s story of free-spirited performers and street people in New York’s severely drug-affected East Village and AIDS in the early 1990s was inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme” and found a ready-made audience among young people.
“It gives hope to people who think ‘I’m different’ and ‘I’m out of place’. That said, “It doesn’t matter,” says James Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop, which nurtured “Rent.” He said, ‘You can go out and start your own community. “”
The New York Theater Workshop will celebrate “Rent” with a gala on March 2 which will be available to stream until March 6. The original cast will be joined by theater stars such as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Platt, Billy Porter, Ali Stroker, Eva Noblezada and Christopher Jackson. Tickets start at $ 25.
To rent won the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Score and Book and a Pulitzer Prize. It spanned 12 years on Broadway and over 5,000 performances, launching the careers of Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Anthony Rapp.
There was a 2005 film version, several tours, an off-Broadway revival, international productions, a Hollywood Bowl concert, and a live-action staging on Fox in 2019, all fueled by songs such as “Take Me or Leave Me “,” Out Tonight “and the” Seasons of Love “which will please everyone.
“Rent” has since been referenced in everything from “The Big Bang Theory” to “The Simpsons” to “I Am Legend”. In the movie “Team America: World Police”, puppets perform a show called “Lease”.
Larson never lived to see his triumph: he died at 35 of an aortic aneurysm after his last dress rehearsal in January 1996.
The 15 original actors stay in touch and share a text thread. “We kind of immediately fell into a relationship and trust with each other, especially after the tragedy,” Heredia said. “There is nothing that binds people together more than tragedy.”
The musical had an unpretentious start. The New York Theater Workshop had just moved into its East Village space in the summer of 1992 and was under construction. Larson cycled over and poked his head in it.
“He was curious because he wrote this musical for the East Village and was looking for a house for this one which is in the East Village,” Nicola said.
A few days later, Larson put down a screenplay and a tape of him singing all the songs. The timing was perfect. “We were looking for something to do for our neighborhood in the literal sense of the word and in the walks of this musical,” said Nicola.
It was quickly clear that Larson was steeped in classical music, pop and everything in between, what Pascal calls an “incredibly unique and eclectic soup of influence.” Larson’s musical topped the company’s list.
“People can write music. People can write words. Not many people can write words and music together, ”says Nicola. “And then even less can understand putting the words and the music in a dramatic context.”
The show attracted Rubin-Vega, who was generally not interested in musical theater. “It spoke to me,” she recalls. “I knew these people. They’re the kind of people I hung out with. It was, she adds, a musical that she herself wanted to see.
She would earn a Tony nomination for her Mimi, an HIV positive heroin addict and stripper. She remembers watching and seeing audiences singing – weeks before a cast album was even available. They were regular customers.
“It was a supernova,” she says.
Just being in “Rent” changed the life of Heredia, a 24-year-old who never thought he would be in a musical, let alone the one that made the jump to Broadway.
“I never saw my face on the faces of people who were on Broadway,” says Heredia, who played doomed drag queen Angel.
It was Heredia, a hyperactive kid from the self-proclaimed club, who one day, during a rehearsal break, jumped onto a table in heels – much to director Michael Greif’s surprise. This movement was put into the show.
“The trick of that whole number wasn’t jumping on the table. It was the jump from the table, ”Heredia laughs. “My back and my knees are paying it now.”
Heredia won a Tony for his work, but he says he cherishes more the dozens of people who approached him to say that Angel helped them date their parents, accept their son, or just inspire them. .
“The impact this has had on the generations affected me even more than the Tony,” he says. “It was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life.”
“Rent” also helped put the New York Theater Workshop on the map, where it continued to nurture shows like “Hadestown”, “Once” and “Slave Play”.
“You can really look at the history of the New York Theater Workshop divided neatly between before ‘Rent’ and after ‘Rent’,” Nicola said. “It’s so important. It transformed the organization.
A fan of “Rent” is Miranda, the visionary behind “Hamilton,” Rubin-Vega noted. “In no uncertain terms, it is a legacy of Jonathan, just as Jonathan was a legacy of Sondheim,” she said.
Adds Pascal: “It’s a gift that continues to give.”
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